Part 25 (1/2)

The truth is that Freemasonry in a generic sense is simply a system of binding men together for any given purpose, since it is obvious that allegories and symbols, like the _x_ and _y_ of algebra, can be interpreted in a hundred different manners. Two pillars may be said to represent strength and stability, or man and woman, or light and darkness, or any other two things we please. A triangle may signify the Trinity, or Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, or any other triad. To say that any of these symbols have an absolute meaning is absurd.

The allegories of Freemasonry are equally capable of various interpretations. The building of the Temple of Solomon may signify the progress of any undertaking and Hiram the victim of its opponents. So also with regard to the ”secret tradition” of Freemasonry concerning ”a loss which has befallen humanity”[658] and its ultimate recovery. Any body of people working for an object may be said to have experienced a loss and to aim at its recovery.

In the same way the whole organization of Freemasonry, the plan of admitting candidates to successive degrees of initiation, of binding them to secrecy by fearful oaths, is one that can be employed for any purpose, social, political, philanthropic, or religious, for promoting that which is good or for disseminating that which is evil. It may be used to defend a throne or to overthrow it, to protect religion or to destroy it, to maintain law and order or to create anarchy.

Now, there was, as we have seen, from the beginning, besides the written charges, an _oral tradition_ in Masonry, after the manner of the Cabala, on which the guidance of the society depended. The true character of any form of Freemasonry is thus not to be judged only by its printed ritual, but by the oral instruction of the initiates and the interpretations placed on the symbols and ritual. Naturally these interpretations vary in different countries and at different periods. Freemasonry is described in its Ritual as ”a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and ill.u.s.trated by symbols.” But what code of morality? In studying the history of the Order we shall find that the same code was by no means common to all masonic bodies, nor is it to-day. Some maintain a very high standard of morals; others appear to possess no standard at all. Mr. Waite observes that ”the two doctrines of the unity of G.o.d and the immortality of the soul const.i.tute 'the philosophy of Freemasonry.'”[659] But these doctrines are by no means essential to the existence of Freemasonry; the Grand Orient has renounced both, but it still ranks as Freemasonry.

M. Paul Nourrisson is therefore perfectly right in saying: ”There are as many Masonries as countries; there is no such thing as universal Masonry.”[660] Broadly, however, modern Freemasonry may be divided into two kinds: the variety worked in the British Empire, in America, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and Grand Orient Masonry, which prevails in Catholic countries and of which the most important centre is the Grand Orient of Paris.

Continental Masonry

The fact that Masonry in Protestant countries is neither revolutionary nor anti-religious is frequently used by Catholic writers to show that Protestantism identifies itself with the aims of Masonry, and by Freemasons to prove that the tyranny of the Church of Rome has driven Masonry into an att.i.tude hostile to Church and State. The point overlooked in both these contentions is the essential difference in the character of the two kinds of Masonry. If the Grand Orient had adhered to the fundamental principle of British Masonry not to concern itself with religion or politics, there is no reason why it should have come into conflict with the Church. But its duplicity on this point is apparent. Thus in one of its earlier manuals it declares, like British Masonry, that it ”never interferes with questions of government or of civil and religious legislation, and that whilst making its members partic.i.p.ate in the perfecting of all sciences, it positively excepts in the lodges two of the most beautiful, _politics_ and _theology_, because these two sciences divide men and nations which Masonry constantly tends to unite.”[661] But on a further page of the same manual from which this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply ”the political application of Christianity.”[662] Indeed, during the last fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro?

Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges:

You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican government.[663]

And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared ”that nothing should happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry,” and ”if the Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be able to move outside us (_personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous_).”[664]

This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in opposition to both Church and Government.

Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry, ”Brotherly love, relief, and truth,” it has throughout adhered to the formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the war-cry of the Revolution: ”Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” ”It is the law of equality,” says Ragon, ”that has always endeared Masonry to the French,” and ”as long as equality really exists only in the lodges, Masonry will be preserved in France.”[665] The aim of Grand Orient Masonry is thus to bring about universal equality as formulated by Robespierre and Babeuf. In the matter of liberty we read further that as men are all by nature free--the old fallacy of Rousseau and of the Declaration of the Rights of Man--therefore ”no one is necessarily subjected to another nor has the right to rule him.”[666] The revolutionary expresses the same idea in the phrase that ”no man should have a master.” Finally, by fraternity Grand Orient Masonry denotes the abolition of all national feeling.

It is to Masonry [Ragon says again] that we owe the affiliation of all cla.s.ses of society, it alone could bring about this fusion which from its midst has pa.s.sed into the life of the peoples. It alone could promulgate that humanitarian law of which the rising activity, tending to a great social uniformity, leads to the fusion of races, of different cla.s.ses, of morals, codes, customs, languages, fas.h.i.+ons, money, and measures. Its virtuous propaganda will become the humanitarian law of all consciences.[667]

The policy of the Grand Orient is thus avowedly International Socialism.

Indeed in a further pa.s.sage Ragon plainly indicates this fact:

Every generous reform, every social benefit derives from it, and if these survive it is because Masonry lends them its support. This phenomenon is due only to the power of its organization. The past belongs to it and the future cannot escape from it. By its immense lever of a.s.sociation it alone is able to realize by a productive communion (_communion generatrice_) that great and beautiful social unity conceived by Jaurez, Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier. If Masons wish it, the generous conceptions of these philanthropic thinkers will cease to be vain Utopias.[668]

Who are the philanthropic thinkers enumerated here but the men derisively described by Karl Marx as the ”Utopian Socialists” of the nineteenth century? Utopian Socialism is thus simply the open and visible expression of Grand Orient Freemasonry. Moreover, these Utopian Socialists were almost without exception Freemasons or members of other secret societies.

The Freemason Clavel confirms the foregoing account by Ragon. Thus, like Ragon, he quotes, the principle expressed in a ritual for the initiation of a Master Mason:

It is expressly forbidden to Masons to discuss amongst themselves, either in the lodge or outside it, religious and political matters, these discussions having usually the effect of creating discord where formerly peace, union, and fraternity reigned. This masonic law admits of no exceptions.[669]

But Clavel also goes on to say:

To efface amongst men the distinctions of colour, rank, creed, opinions, country; to annihilate fanaticism, and ... the scourge of war; in a word, to make of the whole human race one and the same family united by affection, by devotion, by work and knowledge: that, my brother, is the great work which Freemasonry has undertaken, etc.[670]

Up to a point many a British Freemason reading these pa.s.sages will declare himself completely in accord with the sentiments expressed.

Humanitarianism, the obliteration of cla.s.s distinctions, fraternization between men of all races, conditions, and religious creeds, enter of course largely into the spirit of British Masonry, but form simply the basis on which Masons meet together in the lodges and not a political system to be imposed on the world in general.

British Masonry thus makes no attempt to interfere with the existing social system or form of Government; the essence of its teaching is that each member of the Fraternity should seek to reform himself and not society. In a word, individual regeneration takes the place of the social reorganization advocated by the Grand Orient under the influence of Illuminism. The formula of the ”United States of Europe” and of the ”Universal Republic” first proclaimed by the Illuminatus, Anacharsis Clootz,[671] has long been the slogan of the French lodges.[672]

In the matter of religion, Grand Orient Masonry has entirely departed from the principle laid down by the British lodges. If the Catholic Church has shown itself hostile to Masonry, it must be remembered that in Catholic countries Masonry has shown itself militantly anti-Catholic.

”Freemasonry,” one of its modern orators declared, ”is the anti-Church, the anti-Catholicism, the Church of Heresy (_la contre Eglise, le contre Catholicisme, l'Eglise de l'Heresie_).”[673] The _Bulletin_ of the Grand Orient in 1885 officially declared: ”We Freemasons must pursue the definite demolition of Catholicism.”

But the Grand Orient goes further than this and attacks all forms of religion. Thus, as has been said, those ”ancient landmarks” of British Masonry, belief in the Great Architect of the Universe and in the immortality of the soul, had never formed an integral part of its system, and it was only in 1849 that for the first time ”it was distinctly formulated that the basis of Freemasonry is a belief in G.o.d and in the immortality of the soul, and the solidarity of Humanity.” But in September 1877 the first part of this formula was deleted, all allusions to the Great Architect were omitted, and the statute now reads: ”Its basis is absolute liberty of conscience and the solidarity of Humanity.”[674] British Freemasonry, which does not admit liberty of conscience in the sense of Atheism, but demands that every Mason should profess belief in some form of religion and which insists that the Volume of the Sacred Law--in England the Bible, in Mohammedan countries the Koran, and so on--should be placed on the table in its lodges, thereupon broke off all relations with the Grand Orient. In March 1878 the following resolution was pa.s.sed unanimously: